In a load-balanced configuration, a load-balancer system receives requests for service from numerous client systems. Depending on the load-balancing algorithm used therein, the load-balancer sends a received request to one of the systems participating in the load-balanced group of systems serviced by the load-balancer. The system that receives the request from the load-balancer processes the request, or queues the request for processing, depending on the conditions and configuration of the system.
Presently, if a system in a load-balanced group has excessive utilization of the processor, the memory, the network bandwidth, the electrical power, or some other computing resource, the system can offload the request to another peer system in the group. Such presently available offloading is dependent only upon the utilization-related conditions of one or more computing resources in system.
Some other presently available offloading algorithms look at the number of requests pending in a queue in the system. When that queue-size exceeds a threshold, the presently available offloading algorithm offloads one or more requests from the queue to shorten the queue. A request is interchangeably referred to herein as a “job” unless expressly distinguished where used.